Stoke on tour: Mark Hughes sets out ambitions for new season

Mark Hughes wants to get back to exceeding expectations as Stoke boss as he tries to use any disappointment from last season as a driving force this time around.

Stoke had finished ninth three times in a row before dropping to 13 last time around, picking up fewer points and conceding more goals than in the manager's previous campaigns.

Hughes hopes his transfer manoeuvres this summer get the trend going back in the right direction.

"It gets harder every year and we never underestimate that," he said.

"We've done well to continue to push and one out of four seasons when we just didn't quite exceed expectations, because prior to that is what we had been doing. It's a situation we want to improve.

"That's a challenge and we'll use it as a positive. The fact that the general perception is that we underachieved somewhat will help us to make sure it doesn't happen again."

Stoke have brought in Darren Fletcher from West Brom and teenage left-back Josh Tymon from Hull but Hughes is far from finished freshening up his squad.

He wants to add more highlights for supporters compared to last term but insists the platform to build on is still strong.

"We didn't have any big results against the top six," he said, "albeit that we were unbeaten against Man Utd, had a good performance at Man City away, which very few teams were able to do.

"We had disappointing margins of defeat against Tottenham, who we found a difficult with – but we weren't alone in that regard, there were a lot of teams that had a problem with Tottenham.

"You look back on the season and people might question us defensively when they see the margin of scorelines against those teams but there were only the top seven clubs who lost fewer games. We only lost 16. There were other clubs which lost 16 as well but only the top seven lost fewer.